At the end of this booke (the last paragraph) speaking of 'engins and inventions not usual to be thought on and had in readinesse.'—
'Of these and many mo important mattars militare, I shall have occasion at large to dilate in my treatise of great artillerie and pyrotechnie, ☞ whose publication I have for divers due respects hitherto differred.'
He was the onely sonne of the learned Leonard Digges, esqr, of whom he speakes in the preface to his Stratioticos.
Pliny, Nat. Hist. lib. vii. cap. 51;—'Una familia Curionum in qua tres continua serie Oratores extiterunt.' In this family have been four learned men in an uninterrupted descent—scilicet, two eminent mathematicians (Leonard and Thomas), Sir Dudley Digges, Master of the Rolles, and his sonne Dudley, fellow of Allsoules College, Oxon.
[880]Alae seu scalae mathematicae, quibus visibilium remotissima coelorum theatra conscendi et planetarum omnium itinera novis et inauditis methodis explorari, tum hujus portentosi syderis (in Cassiopea) in mundi boreali plaga insolito fulgore coruscantis distantia et magnitudo immensa situsque protinus tremendus indagari Deique stupendum ostentum terricolis expositum cognosci liquidissime possit.
Thoma Diggesio, Cantiensi, stemmatis generosi, autore, Lond. 1573.
Dedicated
'Ad Guliel. Cecilium, praeclariss. ordinis equitem auratum, baronem Burghleium, summumque Angliae Thesaurarium,' etc.
—luce clarius deprehendi longè supra lunam ipsam esse. Tum demum antiquorum et recentiorum omnium astronomorum modos cometarum et corporum coelestium distantias et magnitudines metiendi quos unquam legeram in animum sevocare coeperam, nec quenquam reperire poteram qui viam huic subtilissimae parallaxi examinandae convenientem demonstravit. Solus igitur, omnium astronomorum antiquorum et recentiorum ope orbatus, (in fluctuanti dubitationum plurimarum pelago jactatus) ad meipsum redii: brevissimoque spatio (foelicibus mathematicis spirantibus auris) portum optatum assequendi varios cursus expeditissimos hactenus a nemine exploratos atque ab omni erroris scopulo tutissimos inveni. Quos in exigui libelli formam redactos honori tuo exhibere decrevi, mei officii testimonium (nisi me fallit Philautia) haud vulgari genio conscriptum, neque brevi temporum curriculo periturum—
[881]Praefatio Authoris.